342 COSMOS. 



and celestial globes of Blaeuw (1601), of Bayer (1603), and 

 of Paul Merula (1605). Such were the materials for the 

 foundation of the topography of the southern heavens before 

 Halley ( 1677 ), and before the meritorious astronomical 

 researches of the Jesuits Jean de Fontaney, Richaud and 

 Noel. The intimate connection between the history of 

 astronomy and that of geography thus indicates those memo- 

 rable epochs in which (scarcely two hundred and fifty years 

 ago) men first acquired the knowledge necessary for the 

 completion of the cosmical image of the firmament and of 

 the configuration of continents. 



The Magellanic Clouds, the larger of which covers a celes- 

 tial space of forty-two, and the smaller a space of ten square 

 degrees, certainly produce, at first sight, the same impression 

 on the unaided eye as might be excited by two bright por- 

 tions of the Milky Way, equal in size and isolated in position. 

 The smaller cloud entirely disappears in clear moonlight, 

 while the larger one only loses a considerable portion of its 

 brightness. Sir John Herschel's delineation of these objects is 

 admirable, and accurately corresponds with the vivid impres- 

 sions excited in my own mind during my sojourn in Peru. 

 Astronomy is indebted to the laborious researches of this 

 observer at the Cape of Good Hope in 1837, for the first 

 accurate analysis of this most wondrous aggregation of hete- 

 rogeneous elements. 88 He found a large number of individual 



88 Cosmos, vol. i. p. 69 and note. See Olserv. at the Cape, 

 pp. 143-164 ; pi. vii. gives a representation of the Magellanic 

 Clouds as they appear to the naked eye ; pi. x. the telescopic 

 analysis of the Nubecula Major, and'pl. xi. fig. 4 ( 20-23), 

 affords a special view of the nebula Doradus. Outlines, 

 892-896, pi. v, fig. 1, and James Dunlop in the Philos. 

 Transact, for 1828, part i. pp. 147-151. So erroneous were 

 the views of the earlier observers that the Jesuit Fontaney, 



